Root Founder Arpit Goel on Making US Instant Payment Rails Usable

Root, an instant payment platform for receivables, payables and money transmission, came out of stealth at the end of June. The company connects businesses directly to the banking ecosystem through a single API, removing third-party processors from the flow, and positions itself as the infrastructure layer that makes rails such as RTP and FedNow practical to use at scale.

Founder and chief executive Arpit Goel is building on a track record that includes founding Gamma, a data security and AI company acquired by Palo Alto Networks. He answered The Fintech Times' questions in writing.

Tell us about Root and the problem it launched to solve.

I've always gravitated towards infrastructure problems because they're the ones that have the biggest leverage. My first company, Gamma, was in data security and AI, and following its acquisition by Palo Alto Networks, I spent the next few years helping build that business at scale. What I learned is that when you solve a foundational infrastructure problem, you're not just improving one product, you're enabling thousands of others to build on top of it.

When I started looking at payments, I uncovered the exact same opportunity. Money is arguably the most important thing businesses move every day, yet the infrastructure behind it feels like it's stuck in decades past. Businesses have become incredibly sophisticated, but moving money remains slow, fragmented and operationally complex. To me, it was an infrastructure problem worth solving and ultimately led us to building Root.

I think most people assume the problem in payments is the payment itself. I actually don't think that's the problem. The problem is everything that happens before the payment ever moves.

If a business wants to move money today, it typically has to rely on one or more intermediaries that receive the funds, hold them for some period of time and then send them to the final recipient. That's become so normal that people haven't questioned the process.

What does a single-API approach to instant receivables, payables and money transmission change for the businesses using it, compared with the processor-led model it replaces?

The way I think about it is this: payment rails like RTP and FedNow are incredibly important, but they're only a part of the equation. Businesses still have to connect to banks, manage different payment methods and build a lot of infrastructure before they can actually use those rails at scale.

What Root does is remove that complexity and onus on banks. Through a single API, we connect businesses directly to the banking ecosystem and handle the orchestration underneath. We believe better infrastructure, not another intermediary, solves the problem. Our goal is to make moving money feel as simple for businesses as moving data between two systems.

People hear "programmable treasury" and it sounds complicated, but the idea is actually very simple. Today, finance teams spend a lot of time deciding how to move money, with options ranging from ACH, a wire, RTP and more, and managing all of the systems behind those decisions. Programmable treasury automates that process, using rules to route payments in the most efficient way based on cost, speed and business needs. That means fewer manual decisions, faster payments and more time spent on higher-value work.

Why did you choose to launch from stealth now, and what can Root do that others cannot?

The inspiration really came from looking at where the rest of the world was headed. If you look at countries like Brazil, they've shown what's possible when money moves instantly between bank accounts. At the same time, the US has been making tremendous progress with infrastructure like RTP and FedNow. The rails are finally here, but most businesses still find them difficult to access.

That's what we spent our time solving while we were in stealth, as we wanted to be thorough in our approach. We wanted to build the infrastructure layer that makes those payment rails practical for businesses to use. We really felt it was important to emerge once we had real connectivity, real customers and a platform that could actually simplify this problem, not just talk about it.

How do you see instant payments adoption playing out in the US against the backdrop of FedNow and RTP?

I actually think this is one of the most interesting things happening in financial infrastructure right now. The conversation shouldn't be about whether the US has real-time payments anymore, because it does. The question should be why businesses still find them difficult to use.

Countries like Brazil and India approached this as an ecosystem transformation. They made it easy for banks, businesses and developers to adopt the infrastructure. In the US, we have a much more fragmented banking landscape, which makes integration significantly more complex. I think this next phase won't focus on building new rails, but rather be focused on making the existing ones accessible, which is what we, at Root, are here to solve.

What is next for Root over the coming years?

When you zoom out, every major form of infrastructure eventually becomes invisible. People don't think about how information moves across the internet or how electricity gets to their homes. They just expect it to work. I think payments are heading in the same direction.

Five years from now, businesses shouldn't have to think about payment rails, bank integrations or treasury workflows. They should simply define what they want to happen and let the infrastructure make it happen instantly and securely. Our ambition is for Root to be that part of the infrastructure layer, making money move as seamless and programmable as the rest of modern software.